§ 1. Verse 40: “And at the appointed time the king of the South will fight against him, and the king of the North will come against him like a tempest. The king of the North will come against him in chariots and horsemen and a great fleet, and he will enter the lands and crush them and pass through, and he will enter the glorious land, and many will fall; but these alone will be saved from his hand: Edom and Moab and the first of the sons of Ammon.”
Most of the ministers omit these words and those which follow, because they see that they can in no manner be accommodated to the Pontiff. In this matter they thoroughly betray a seared conscience. For if the things attributed to this king do not agree with the Pope, with what face do they attribute the rest to him? Yet now someone has been found who opposes us and asserts that these very things too were said against the Pontiff: Paul Laurentius, who in his preface confessed that he lacked abundance of wisdom—out of truth, not humility—and foolishly believed and published another preacher’s encomium which had called his sermons learned. It is useful, therefore, to hear the delirious man. On page 38:
Third, the Angel in the Prophet speaks of the fall of this idolatry and what sort of end it will have: namely, when its pomp and arrogance are at their summit, it will begin to fall and pass into nothing. Concerning this the text reads thus: “The king of the South will fight against him, and the king of the North will come against him.”
Here we hear that this impiety is tending toward its end, for express mention of the word “end” is made in the text. At such an end it will happen thus, says the text: “The king of the South will fight against—
—the king of the North.” At that battle wondrous things will be seen; what the end will be will be manifest.
Here before all things I shall ask who are those two kings who are to fight against one another. And if someone should perhaps suspect the king of the South to be Ptolemy, king of Egypt, and the king of the North to be Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, of whom mention was made in the preceding chapter, nevertheless the Angel says to the Prophet that the words have been sealed; therefore it could not be understood who these kings are. But after the prophecies have been fulfilled and the battle completed, it will then appear whence it arose and for what cause it happened.
But now the Lord God has raised up Christian men who from time to time opposed the Pope’s immoderate arrogance and in some manner showed men what they ought to think of him, and thus they crushed him. For example, when Pontiff Boniface VIII was altogether swollen with pride, so as to call himself Lord of the whole world, in spiritual as well as temporal matters, and thus wished to command the whole world, Christ the Lord raised up Philip, king of western France, who in the year 1303 so overwhelmed the Pope at Anagni, led him captive, and fought him down so that he died a short time afterward. Concerning him it was afterward written and said: “He entered like a fox, reigned like a lion, and died like a dog.” Perhaps he breathed out his spirit beneath a club.
About twenty years afterward, Pope John XXII was deposed from the Pontificate through public letters on account of excessive avarice; John XXIII, in the year 1415, was cast down from his See on account of various wicked deeds. Afterward also at the Council of Constance the Pope received no slight blow through the martyr John Hus.
The gravest blow of all the Pope underwent through Doctor Martin Luther a hundred years ago, who preached and wrote against him, so that whole kingdoms and nations have now withdrawn from him. Christ the Lord brought about all these things—all the doctrine and writings by which the Pope has been manifested—and caused him to receive a mortal blow and begin to fall; he ordained and raised up men to accomplish it. Therefore Christ the Lord is the king of the East who inflicted the blow upon the Pope’s Mausim of the Mass. For Christ the Lord is the Sun of justice rising from on high and the true light which illuminates the entire world. On the other hand, the king of the North who fights against him must be the Pope himself, for no one opposes the splendor and shining dawn except the Pope alone, as experience has proved: he himself rushed with horsemen, chariots, and ships by land and sea, attempting to destroy all his adversaries, and indeed killed very many. He is called king of the North because darkness lies toward the North; he himself is darkened by spiritual darkness and driven by the devil, the god of darkness. And this is the Pope’s end: he will begin to fall, but will rebel violently and kill many in the renowned land.
§ 2. Let us expound the words and then investigate the prophecy and its times.
First, “at the appointed time”: beʿēt qēṣ, “at the time of the end,” καὶ ἐν καιρῷ πέρατι, “and at the end-time.” Around the end of the time, when it is already near that there should be no more time. Vatablus also has “at the appointed time,” which is the same as if he said, “at the time established by God.”
“The king of the South will fight against him”: weyitnaggaḥ ʿimmô meleḵ hanneḡeḇ, συγκερατίσεται μετ’ αὐτοῦ ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῦ νότου, “the king of the South will strike at him with the horn.” For God values the struggles of kings fighting with great armies no more highly than those of bulls fighting one another.
“And the king of the North will come against him like a tempest, in chariots and horsemen and a great fleet; and he will enter the lands and crush them and pass through.” The Hebrew is weyistaʿēr; the Septuagint has συσταραχθήσεται, “he will be violently disturbed.” The Hebrew means to bristle, move, be stupefied, and be tempest-tossed. They think śāʿar was put in place of another form, meaning to cast down like a tempest. The Greeks are accustomed to translate it by καταιγίζειν, λικμᾶν, ἐξαίρειν, φυσᾶν, φθείρειν—“to storm, winnow, raise up, blow, destroy.” See Jeremiah 23, where there is σεισμός, “shaking”; Zechariah 9:14, σάλπιγξ, “trumpet”; Job 38:1, λαῖλαψ, “hurricane”; Isaiah 29:6 and Psalm 148:8, πύριον, “a fiery thing”; Psalm 54:8, καταιγίς, “tempest.” The king of the North will therefore enter with great violence and destroy everything. Now let us see who these kings are and how certain is the faith of those who confidently assert all these things concerning the Pontiff and disturb the world by playing with riddles and allegories.
§ 3. Saint Jerome says that near the consummation there will be ten kings who divide the world among themselves, three of whom—those of Egypt, Africa, and Ethiopia—are to be killed by Antichrist; afterward, the remaining kings will submit to him. The ministers cry out that the Pope has done these things; we deny it and assert the contrary. The Pope is not the king of the North; he did not rush upon the king of the South or do the things which are written here; therefore the Pope is not Antichrist. Luther interprets these things allegorically, as is now evident from the words of Laurentius. But because this is ridiculous and contrary to the text, the rest were ashamed of it. Finally, nothing in matters of doctrine is concluded from such ill-fitting allegories.
I show that it contradicts the text. It names real kings of Persia in verses 2 and 3, and real kings of the South and North in verses 5 and 6; Egypt too is named in verses 8 and 17. It comes into no one’s mind to understand the king of the South as anyone other than the king of Egypt, or the king of the North as anyone other than the king of Syria. We must therefore remain with the same signification here, so that they are real kings, one of Egypt and the other of Syria, who fight one another.
Accordingly, wearied by such puerile trifles, Junius, Tremellius, Abbot, Bruchthon, Sutcliffe, and Danaeus altogether deny that anything in Daniel treats of Antichrist; they say that all these things pertain to the wars of Antiochus, Physcon, and Philometor. Why, then, do others most laboriously bring forth these things concerning Antichrist and the Pope and twist them to their own purpose?
§ 4. The Lutherans object: Edom, Ammon, and Moab will escape Antichrist’s tyranny, but those peoples do not now exist; therefore they must be understood allegorically. But from the same antecedent the Calvinists conclude differently: those peoples do not now exist; therefore those who will escape do not exist now; therefore this does not concern Christian times, but those of Antiochus. These latter propose nothing against the Pontiff from Daniel. But the former err gravely, for the peoples are called by those names by reason of their places, although they have in great part ceased to exist as peoples. For amid so many migrations, mixtures, and destructions of peoples, the certain origins of any nation cannot easily be established; indeed, I do not think that αὐτόχθονες, “people sprung from the soil itself,” now exist anywhere, unless perhaps in the western and most remote Indies.
Nor did the kingdoms of those peoples still survive in the time of Antiochus; only scattered remnants did. David destroyed the Ammonites, 2 Samuel 11, 12, and 23. Ptolemy Philadelphus occupied Rabbah and called it Philadelphia. Zephaniah 2:8 indeed says, “Moab will be like Sodom and the sons of Ammon like Gomorrah”; nevertheless they survived the captivity, 2 Esdras 9, for they contracted marriages with the Israelites. There were also sons of Ammon in 1 Maccabees 5:6: “And he passed over to the sons of Ammon.” Moabite women also survive in 2 Esdras 13:23. Indeed, 2 Maccabees 10:16 names the fortifications of the Idumaeans, and Herod the Great was an Idumaean. Those most numerous peoples were therefore not so destroyed that remnants did not remain in the same places and survive even today, who will evade the savagery of Antichrist, I believe by the benefit of mountains and hiding places.
§ 5. Finally, the mystery fashioned in the name is now vain: that the elect are meant, who always bore the type of the reprobate. Edom himself certainly was not so named because of martyrdom, but from his profane desire for red pottage. Nor should the Ammonites and Moabites be numbered among the saints on account of the incestuous origin of their names, since they were always enemies of the people of God and cursed by God. Deuteronomy 23:3: “The Ammonites and Moabites will not enter the Church of the Lord in eternity, even after the tenth generation.” It is therefore injurious that, on account of someone’s grammatical or Cabalistic interpretation—on account of an enthusiastic interpretation of Edom, Moab, and Ammon—all Catholic kings should be condemned with the Pontiff and Bishops for Antichristianism.
Finally, not even such tasteless fictions cohere with one another. For how do the martyrs escape the persecution of which Daniel makes mention in this passage? He speaks of chariots, horsemen, and fleets; those peoples will escape these evils, but the martyrs will be oppressed by the armies and fleets of Antichrist. Much less, therefore, does this agree.
“And he will enter the glorious land, and many will fall.” In Hebrew the land is called ארץ צבי, ʾereṣ ṣeḇî; they call it γῆν σαβί, “the land Sabi,” or σαβαείμ, “Sabaeim.” The Greek scholia interpret: τὴν γῆν τῆς ἀξιότητος· ἀπόγονον δὲ παρὰ ἀρετῆς, “the land of worth, a derivative from excellence.” In chapter 8:9 it is called the glorious land, where the Septuagint translates δύσιν, “the west,” appropriately, because the horn came forth against the south and the east and the host, as our interpreter translates. The Roman edition of the Septuagint has πρὸς τὸν νότον, καὶ πρὸς τὴν δύναμιν, “toward the south and toward the host.” In verse 16 of this chapter: “And he will stand in the renowned land.” Jerome testifies that the Septuagint translated it “the land of desire.” The Greek scholia have this on the passage:
Ἀντίοχος ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ· αὕτη γὰρ διὰ τὸν νόμον ὑπῆρχε χώρα τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ θελήσεως, δόξης, δυνάμεως· τούτων γὰρ ἕκαστον τὸ σαβὶ ἑρμηνεύεται.
“Antiochus [will stand] in Judaea; for on account of the Law it was the land of God’s will, glory, and power, since sabi is interpreted as each of these.”
Thus the other reading found in Theodoret, σαβεὶς, must be corrected from this.
This land is Judaea, not Rome. Josephus writes the history thus: after the cities in Syria and Samaria had been conquered by Antiochus, the Jews surrendered themselves to him voluntarily; and after receiving him into the city, they abundantly supplied all things to the whole army and the elephants and assisted him when he attacked the garrison left by Scopas. Accordingly, since the Pontiff did not stand in Judaea, this cannot be attributed to him. For the fact that certain men have referred these things to the holy expedition is exceedingly impious and insulting to the best princes, who snatched the holy land from the hands of a most savage tyrant.